V
THAT ALL THE WORKS OF THE ETERNAL BEING ARE ETERNAL
The principle of nature being necessary and eternal, and its very essence being to act, it must have been always active. If it had not been an ever-active God, it would have been an eternally indolent God, the God of Epicurus, the God who is good for nothing. This truth seems to me to be fully demonstrated.
Hence the world, his work, whatever form it assume, is, like him, eternal; just as the light is as old as the sun, movement as old as matter, and food as old as the animals; otherwise the sun, matter, and the animals would be, not merely useless, but self-contradictory things, chimæras.
What, indeed, could be more contradictory than an essentially active being that has been inactive during an eternity; a formative being that has fashioned nothing, or merely formed a few globes some years ago, without there being the least apparent reason for making them at one time rather than another? The intelligent principle can do nothing without reason; nothing can exist without an antecedent and necessary reason. This antecedent and necessary reason has existed eternally; therefore the universe is eternal.
We speak here a strictly philosophical language; it is not our part even to glance at those who use the language of revelation.
